Celebrating Human Potential and Achievement

The backstories of those who win major awards can be a source of inspiration.

Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

Key points

• Peter Drucker was interested in what made people successful and what others could learn from that successes.
• Stories of those who win Nobel Prizes and MacArthur Fellowships are a source of inspiration.

“I have been reading for years the acceptance speeches of Nobel Prize winners.” – Peter Drucker, The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to Our Changing Society, 1969

Management guru Peter Drucker found inspiration in reading about winners of Nobel Prizes because he was interested in what made people successful. We can follow his example to learn from and find inspiration and instruction in the individual professional journeys of the winners.

Each fall, around this time of year, is unofficial award season, particularly becase of the Nobel Prizes. There's also a personal favorite of mine, the MacArthur Foundation’s MacArthur Fellowships (AKA "Genius Grants").

According to the Foundation, “The MacArthur Fellowship is a $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential.” The 22 awardees in a variety of fields are described as “exceptional, creative, and inspiring people.”

The stories about the awardees (both this year and previously) inform us about what they have studied and worked on, as well as their hopes, plans, and research for the future. They provides a window into human accomplishment, originality, and the art of possibility. We are introduced to highly accomplished people we might not have heard of otherwise, particularly if they are active in fields we don’t normally follow.

High-Level Commendations

Drucker was no stranger to high-level commendations. In particular, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002, the nation’s highest honor for civilians. While he expressed his admiration for the Nobel Prize winners, I am not aware that he publicly commented on the MacArthur Fellowships, which began in 1981.

My sense is that Drucker would find enlightenment from the stories about the Fellows. While many of the winners in recent years are not that well-known beyond their fields of work, a number of earlier Fellows subsequently achieved wider recognition, such as University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth (2013), author of the influential book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance; and Richard Powers (1989), whose novel The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2019.

Unlike the Nobel Prizes, which are awarded within a set number of defined categories each year, the MacArthur Fellowships are not awarded in particular categories. However, since its inception, the foundation has recognized accomplished innovators in fields such as psychology, art, music, fiction and nonfiction writing, biology, health policy, human rights, cultural anthropology, and others.

Personal and Professional Values

The spirit of the MacArthur Fellowships is perfectly congruent with Drucker’s personal and professional values and interests, including:

Scholarship, teaching, and learning. Drucker was a longtime professor at a variety of institutions. Many of the Fellows are affiliated with universities, often doing cutting-edge research. This year’s list includes Jennifer L. Morgan, a professor of social and cultural analysis and history, at New York University; and Joseph Parker, an assistant pofessor of biology and biological engineering at California Institute of Technology.

Transdisciplinarity. Transdiscipline work is a key theme of Claremont Graduate University, home of the Drucker School of Management. Drucker himself taught, wrote about, and was influenced by many subjects beyond management. One of the 2024 Fellows, Princeton University professor Ruha Benjamin, is described as a “transdisciplinary scholar and writer illuminating how advances in science, medicine, and technology reflect and reproduce social inequality.”

Literature and poetry: Drucker wrote two novels, was a voracious reader, and valued the power of this type of creative expression. Jason Reynolds, a 2024 Fellow, is “a writer of children’s and young adult literature whose books reflect the rich inner lives of kids of color and offer profound moments of human connection.” Another 2024 Fellow, Emory University professor Jericho Brown, is “a poet reflecting on contemporary culture and identity in works that combine formal experimentation and intense self-examination.”

Music and musicians: Drucker was a lifelong music lover who often referenced the power of music and its influence on his life and career. 2024 Fellow Johnny Gandelsman is described as “a violinist and producer reimagining classical works and nurturing the creation of new music across genre and stylistic boundaries.”

Visual arts. Drucker was an expert and major collector of Japanese art, but he appreciated many forms of art. Ebony G. Patterson, a 2024 Fellow, is described as “a multimedia artist creating intricate, densely layered, and visually dazzling works that center the culture and aesthetics of postcolonial spaces.” Another artist awarded this year, Wendy Red Star, is “a visual artist engaging with archival materials in works that challenge colonial historical narratives.”

Forging Our Own Professional Paths

While most of us won’t reach the rarefied accomplishment levels of Nobelists and MacArthur Fellows, we can look to their personal examples for inspiration for forging our own original and unique professional paths. We don’t know where those paths will lead, but perhaps many of the awardees did not always know where their own paths were heading, or what they would discover along the way.